Tuula Rasen BACP BPC FPC 

Psychotherapist Amelia White, who specialises in 'Boarding School Syndrome' (Schaverien, 2015), writes in her blog about the complexity of Mother's Day for ex-boarders recovering from childhood separation from their mothers : "Boarding school creates a rupture in the mother-child bond, and for many, that rupture remains unresolved into adulthood. Being sent away often severs the early sense of emotional safety and attachment, sometimes in ways that are never fully repaired. A

In his popular 2016 opinion article Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person in the New York Times, Alain de Botton writes: "It’s one of the things we are most afraid might happen to us. We go to great lengths to avoid it. And yet we do it all the same: We marry the wrong person. Partly, it’s because we have a bewildering array of problems that emerge when we try to get close to others. We seem normal only to those who don’t know us very well.” [...] "The problem is that before

In their book 'What They Forgot to Teach You at School, published in 2021, Alain de Botton and The School of Life team write: "We are, most of us, supremely gifted at the art of self-hatred. If we treated a stranger the way we tend to treat ourselves, we might be arrested for cruelty. In our low moments, we compare the way we are to the way we would ideally want to be — and cannot forgive ourselves for how far we have fallen from our own ideals. We scan our intimate histories

"When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in

“As a young man I believed if I could just find the “right” person, happiness would automatically follow. There was so much I didn’t understand. That each of us is responsible for our own happiness. That if I didn’t treat myself with consideration and care, chances are others wouldn’t treat me that way either. I didn’t understand pain. I thought the many kinds of pain we suffer when we love another person – longing, anxiety, grief – were feelings to avoid, symptoms to be remo

"B]eing able to tolerate disappointment in life, ourselves and others, is part of being a mature human being who is able to navigate the world and build something – relationships and a life of substance. It will not be perfect, but it will be real." — Mark Vahrmeyer Photograph by Nicolas Jossi

"Couples can come for help for all kinds of reasons" — Andrew Balfour, CEO, Tavistock Relationships Couples therapy in London and online. Tavistock Relationships

" You know that the price of life is death, that the price of love is loss, and still you watch the golden afternoon light fall on a face you love, knowing that the light will soon fade, knowing that the loving face too will one day fade to indifference or bone, and you love anyway — because life is transient but possible, because love alone bridges the impossible and the eternal. " "I think about this and a passage from Louise Erdrich’s 2005 novel" Life will break you. Nobod